


look down at my bleeding heart (wish I were a Vulcan)

by sadieblodgett



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12920292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadieblodgett/pseuds/sadieblodgett
Summary: Jemma Simmons never made it home from Maveth. But something else does.or; Fitz follows her voice across galaxies (who needs a rock when you've got a cell phone?)





	look down at my bleeding heart (wish I were a Vulcan)

em98480.mp3 transcript:  _It’s funny, isn’t it? How far we used to drive to see the stars, back at the Academy. They’re everywhere here. I guess that’s the advantage of no people. [A laugh]. No light pollution. They’re so bright, Fitz, I can’t escape them, not even when I close my eyes._

The cellphone is heavy in his hands. He almost throws it across the room, wants to see it dashed to pieces. At the same time, he never wants to let go.

Instead, Fitz settles for dissembling it himself, trying to force the familiar rhythm of his hands to distract him from his thoughts.

It had been just hours since everything fell apart. Really, things had been crumbling for months, since he’d first watched the footage of Jemma and that bloody rock. Today though, at the bottom of a hole, buried in the last shards of the monolith, of hope, he'd truly felt wrecked.

He’d let himself blindly hope for far too long and now he’s suffering the consequences. Its not like he hadn’t been warned. It wasn’t but three days since Coulson had compared Jemma’s empty desk to his empty wrist and told him to move on. And each of Bobbi’s pitying glances and hesitant questions seem to mean so much more now that he’s accepted it. Jemma Simmons is gone; MIA, presumed dead, and nothing Fitz does will change that.

Here’s to hoping that whatever is on this phone, found lying in the sand on the other side of the portal, can let him finally move on.

An alarm chimes, echoing through the empty lab. The sync is complete. All 64 photos, fourteen audio recordings, and four video files. She must have deleted a good amount of her photos from before to save memory and battery. Jemma had always been a bit camera happy, especially after a couple of drinks, and he remembers accommodating her ever-growing photo library back when he first designed this model. He figures its probably hard to find photo inspiration when stranded on an alien planet, especially with such shoddy lighting.

Fitz’s finger hovers over the mouse. Once he’s played these videos, he’ll have nothing left of her. No matter how many times he watches them (and he will, until he knows her words better than his own), he’ll never hear her laugh again, or feel her hand on his shoulder.

He’s going to be sick.

Like a coward, Fitz runs for the exit, with arms around his stomach and a burning in his eyes. Daisy swings open the door right as he nears it and the force of the blow catches him right in the forehead, knocking him to the ground.

"Shit, Fitz. I didn’t- are you okay?”

He blinks up at her from the floor.

M’fine,” he groans. “Way to knock a guy when he’s already down.”

“Pretty sure the universe has been doing that just fine for months now. Uh, what I mean is… I’m sorry.” She pulls him to his feet. “I didn’t see you. Obviously. I was just coming to check on you. See how everything’s going. With the phone and stuff.”

“Like I said, I’m fine. I don’t need checking up on. Everyone’s been walking on eggshells around me since Simmons-“ Fitz stops and rubs his head. There’s sure to be a massive bruise come morning.

“We didn’t mean to make it worse. That’s the exact _opposite_ of what we wanted. I guess we were trying to give you the space you needed and then with all the crazy shit going on lately, we all got wrapped in our own problems and forgot about how to deal with yours.”

“I'm just tired of being treated like a child. No one tells me anything anymore, and if they do, its bullshit. I saw through all that the last time she left, and I had actual brain damage then. Still do, mind you.”

“Hey, wait a sec. She didn’t _leave_ you. At least not this time. Simmons loved you, you have to know that.”

“Yeah well, she never got the chance to tell me, did she?”

As if in answer, he hears it. Hears  _her._

_“Fitz.”_

 The both freeze. If Jemma hadn’t ensured his precise knowledge of human anatomy, he would swear that his heart was located much closer to his throat.

He turns. Ah. The files. He’s just begun to berate himself for starting to hope, _again,_ when her voice starts up again.

_“It’s possible I’m on one of the poles, but it’s strange. The stars and the two moons, they keep disappearing and reappearing. But there’s no sun. There’s never a sun.”_

He pushes himself back to the desk and stops the playback. He can’t do this right now, not with Daisy still hovering in the doorway.

His legs give out and he falls back into his chair, suddenly exhausted. In fact, he’s fairly sure that he hasn’t slept since the incident with the scroll and his tantrum at the monolith. And he’s positive that he hasn’t slept _well_ in a very long time, maybe since they were still safe and sequestered in the Academy.

Fitz can feel Daisy edging closer to him.

“So that’s all from the phone? She made recordings? This is good, right? Maybe she'll give us some idea of where she is, maybe we can still find her!”

Her voice is edged in optimism and some bitter part of him wants to rip it away from her, make her feel as hopeless as him.

“Even if she told us her exact location right now, we’d have no way to bring her back. So even if, by some chance, she's still alive, she’s likely millions of light-years away. That’s entire galaxies between her and us. All we have are these recordings and a pile of useless rocks over there."

To illustrate, he throws what's left of the phone at the collected pieces of the monolith. The rocks clatter against each other for a moment before going still again. Nothing happens.

"Jemma is gone," he continues. "You all have been trying for months now to get me to accept it and move on. Don’t change your mind now.”

Fitz buries his head in his hands and listens to her move away from him and the final snap of the door behind her. While Daisy was in the lab, all he’d wanted was for her to leave, but her exit leaves him in the same position as before. Alone, staring at the unopened files. He almost chases after her, just for the distraction, just to avoid this moment for a little longer.

 But he doesn't. He owes this to Jemma, and to himself. He needs to hear her last words to him.

Fitz presses play.

 ***

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading  
> title from the song Distant Solar Systems by Julien Baker  
> chapter title from I Found by Amber Run  
> more tags to be added, i honestly have no idea where I'm going with this ;)  
> also, i haven't watched any non-fitzsimmons scenes from s3 since it aired, so take discrepancies from canon lightly


End file.
